Monday, August 26, 2013

Huey Lewis and the News at the Schermerhorn (2013)

Good morning!

Monday's here again! I spent the weekend a) wrasslin' with car troubles (another story for another day...but phew, what a story!), b) having my socks blown off by a vegan bachelorette party in my honor at my friend's Alyx house (there was a VERY explicit cake involved), and c) getting to go see HUEY LEWIS AND THE NEWS LIVE. Live, people! He was like six feet from me! Here is one of the last know photos of me before having seen Huey in concert:

Here's me with my tiny benefactor...he was as excited as I was to see the show!!

I told you guys I was going to get to see the former Hugh Anthony Cregg III back in May, but somehow between then and now, the date creeped up on me! Matthew got home from his bachelor weekend around 4, we ate dinner and watched this video of Richard Belzer being put out by Hulk Hogan (Dangerous Minds never disappoints), and then I put on my party clothes to go get a gander at my beloved News! We paid way too much to park directly next to the venue, and started filing in with the rest of the audience.

Tiny dress, bolero jacket with shoulder pads, Bananarama hat I am more and moreloathe to leave the house without...what else COULD I have worn to the HL&N show!

Do you remember the hubbub a couple months ago about the Schermerhorn's dire financial straits? I agreed with a lot of the bad press and grouchy Nashvillians who wrote into the newspaper about the limited number of concert offerings for non-classical performances. In the seven years since it's been open, I've only been to the venue twice, once when I won tickets off public radio to see the Symphony, and once as a guest of Matthew's dad for a Musician's Hall of Fame concert. I heard about Gilberto Gil, who I REALLY wanted to see, about a week after he made a super rare North American performance at the concert hall. While there's certainly a place for high-brow arts here along with the more accessible (and sometimes more enjoyable) whine whine twang twang of Nashville's musical heritage, I was glad to see an act like Huey Lewis and the News playing a venue WITHOUT old-enough-to-drive gum stuck to old-enough-to-qualify-for-Social-Security seating, not to mention fantastic acoustics.

PS I was so close to the stage! How close WERE you, you ask?

As is the way of digital camera, Huey actually looks farther away than he did in real life! I'm almost positive he looked directly at Matthew and I while we were ebulliently belting out "Heart and Soul" along with the band (and everyone else in the audience). Unlike my experience at the Adam Ant concert, I knew every word to every song they played, which consisted of the Sports album in its entirety and a couple other songs thrown in for fun. I kind of wish he'd replaced his (perfectly respectable) soul covers of "It's All Right" and "Some Kind of Wonderful" with "Hip to Be Square" and "Doin' It All For My Baby", but you can't have everything. You can see the setlist from the concert here (isn't the 21st century amazing?).

This is how close it felt like he was. Look at him sassin' the audience! Sass on, Huey! Sass on!

One cool thing-- a former bandmate from Huey's days in Clover (when he, almost unimaginably, looked like this and had shoulder length, tousled locks), John McFee, joined the Huey and the News on stage for a few numbers. What's so amazing about Clover, a little known band Huey Lewis only played harmonica in? Oh, maybe that the entire band, minus Huey and the lead singer Alex McCall, makes up the backing band on Elvis Costello's first album, My Aim is True. I.e., one of the greatest rock albums of all time. If they'd needed a harmonica player, Huey himself would have been on it! Guitarist McFee actually plays that haunting lead guitar in "Alison", no joke, and played a mean steel guitar (as he also did on the Sports album) on the band's cover of Hank Williams Sr.'s "Honky Tonk Blues". I love thinking about these unusual musical connections, and how many other ones out there might exist of which I have no inkling.

Look! I even tried to take a video. PS I am terrible at taking videos. Tell 'em how it is, Huey! Only moments later, Matthew and I made the aforementioned eye contact with the man himself. Aaaah! I die.

All in all, it was a great concert! We were singing our little guts out along with the band, and stood, clapping wildly with our also standing fellow audience members, throughout the whole 2 hour set. Most of the crowd was about my parents' age (what else is new in the musical circles I run in), and I actually overheard a woman's conversation in the merch line (yes, I got a T-shirt; yes, I am wearing it right now) about how the Sports album, now in its thirtieth year, had come out her freshman year of college. Ugh! It just makes me pea green with envy thinking about a time in which you could have just bought a $15 ticket to see Van Halen, Prince, Huey, whoever else...in their youthful prime! Still, there were almost no signs of wear and tear on HLN...it was a GREAT concert. Here's one last look at me, post-concert, with the signage outside. SOLD OUT, BAYBEE! And outta SIGHT!

So! How was your weekend? Have you seen any great nostalgia or non nostalgia concerts lately? If you could see any act from 1982 IN 1982, who would you want to score front row tickets for? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but more vintage stuff tomorrow! I'll see you then. :)